101 quotes about design and creativity

101 quotes about design and creativity

Updated 12/31/2018: This was our most popular post of the year. To celebrate, we’ve added even more creativity quotes. Happy new year!

We asked some of our favorite folks in the InVision community to share the quotations about design and creativity that have stuck with them throughout their careers. Without further ado, here are those nuggets of wisdom.

“Design can be art. Design can be simple. That’s why it’s so complicated.” –Paul Rand

Bojan Kocijan, UX/UI Designer at CONDA

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” –Leonardo da Vinci

Pedro Pinto Coelho Gil, Designer and Creative Strategist at PACSIS

“Whitespace is like air: it is necessary for design to breathe.” –Wojciech Zieliński

Jeffrey Geleijn, Visual/Motion Designer at Unc Inc.

“Leave it better than you found it.” –Bruce A. Nordstrom

Aleksandr Hvorostyany, Designer at Funkytag

“Look at usual things with unusual eyes.” –Vico Magistretti

Giorgio Laboratore, owner of Studio Lido

“People ignore designs that ignore people” –Frank Chimero

Ramona, Business Analyst at Nexstream SDN BHD

“You don’t have to be ‘a creative’ to be creative.” –Drory Ben-Menachem

Christoph Wojciechowski, Designer

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” -Douglas Adams

Ferran Alvarez, Freelance UX/Interaction Designer

“For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” –H. L. Mencken

Josef Strapáč, Designer

“Design is thinking made visual.” –Saul Bass

Marina Caramagno, Visual Designer at USEEDS

“Good design is honest.” –Dieter Rams

Abhilash Pillai, Senior UX Researcher, Freshworks

“The best way to predict the future is to create it” –Abraham Lincoln

Bruno Peccoud, Head of Design, Fairfest Media

“To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit: it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse. To design is to transform prose into poetry.” –Paul Rand

“If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.” –Paraphrased from Charles Bukowski’s poem “Roll the Dice”

“It is not enough that we build products that function, that are understandable and usable, we also need to build products that bring joy and excitement, pleasure and fun, and, yes, beauty to people’s lives.” –Don Norman

“The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic ‘right-brain’ thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn’t.” –Daniel Pink

“Above all, think of life as a prototype. We can conduct experiments, make discoveries, and change our perspectives. We can look for opportunities to turn processes into projects that have tangible outcomes. We can learn how to take joy in the things we create whether they take the form of a fleeting experience or an heirloom that will last for generations. We can learn that reward comes in creation and re-creation, no just in the consumption of the world around us. Active participation in the process of creation is our right and our privilege. We can learn to measure the success of our ideas not by our bank accounts by their impact on the world.” –Tim Brown

“There’s the whole Buddhist thing about the essence of a bowl being its emptiness—that’s why it’s useful. Its emptiness allows it to hold something. I guess that means that design must talk about something else. If you make design about design, you’re just stacking bowls, and that’s not what bowls are for.” –Frank Chimero

“Good designers must always be avant-gardists, always one step ahead of the times. They should–and must–question everything generally thought to be obvious. They must have an intuition for people’s changing attitudes. For the reality in which they live, for their dreams, their desires, their worries, their needs, their living habits. They must also be able to assess realistically the opportunities and bounds of technology.” –Dieter Rams

“Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing.” –Jay-Z

“Innovators have to be open. They have to be able to imagine things that others cannot and be willing to challenge their own preconceptions. They also need to be conscientious. An innovator who has brilliant ideas but lacks the discipline and persistence to carry them out is merely a dreamer … But crucially, innovators need to be disagreeable … They are people willing to take social risks—to do things that others might disapprove of.” –Malcolm Gladwell

“Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem: the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible; his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints.” –Charles Eames